Digital insurers in India: companies and hiring

Digital insurers

Insurers built as software companies

Say you buy your first motorbike. You insure it on an app in five minutes, with no agent and no paperwork. Six months later, someone scrapes it in a parking lot. You photograph the damage, file the claim in the same app, and the repair is approved the same day.

Every Market Segment before this one in Industry Vertical 21 sold software to insurers. This last one covers some of the insurers themselves: the ones that were built as software companies, and hire engineers of their own. They are called digital insurers. They sell directly to customers, set prices using models, and settle claims in an app.

Through an agent, a motorbike policy is sold with paperwork and the claim goes to a claims office. With a digital insurer, you buy in the app in five minutes at a price set by a model, photograph the damage to claim, and the repair is approved the same day; Acko, Ethos and Wrisk work this way.

The traditional insurers, reinsurers and brokers are not here. Many of them are large global groups with technology centres in India. (More on them in the GCC collection.) India's own large insurers are mostly not covered in this Market Segment either. This is a small Market Segment: three companies, and one more that is covered mainly in another Market Segment.

This is also the last Market Segment of Domain V, Fintech.

Every company named here has posted software engineering jobs in India. Famous companies that don't actively hire software engineers in India are left out.

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What this section holds

What this section holds

Back to your motorbike from the start of this Market Segment, insured and claimed on an app.

Acko

with engineers in Bengaluru, is India's best-known digital insurer. It sells car, bike and health insurance directly from its app. It also sells insurance inside other companies' products, such as insurance sold with a flight or a phone. Claims are handled in the app. (More on insurance sold inside other products in Market Segment 21.5, Embedded insurance.)

Ethos

with engineers in Bengaluru, is an American life insurer. It sells term life insurance online in minutes. It decides whom to insure, and at what price, using models built from data, instead of a medical examination. It builds much of its product in Bengaluru.

Wrisk

with engineers in Delhi, is a British digital insurance company.

One company covered mainly in another Market Segment belongs here too:

Bajaj Finserv

with engineers in Pune and Bengaluru, is here for its group's general and life insurance companies. It sells their insurance through the same app as its loans. (More on it in Market Segment 18.1, Digital lending and BNPL, in Industry Vertical 18, Lending and credit.)

The insurer as a software company.

The digital insurers set prices from data, sell inside other products, and settle claims in minutes. Their costs are lower than a traditional insurer's, because they pay no agent's commission and run no large claims office. The open question is whether that is enough to win, in a business where the largest cost is the claims themselves.

A digital insurer pays no agent's commission and runs no large claims office, so its costs are lower than a traditional insurer's. The claims themselves remain the largest cost for both, which is why it is an open question whether lower costs are enough to win.

So your motorbike from the start of this Market Segment was insured, and its claim was paid, by a company that is really a software company. It set the price with a model, sold the policy in an app, and approved the repair from a photograph.

Who they hire

Who these companies hire, and for what, is on What insurtech hires for.

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